His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI made the list of the Forbes’ Most Powerful Men in 2010. The powerful should also have powerful information at their disposal, with that in mind, I have written this review of one of his books to make it easy for him to absorb new information.
Neither the word Trinity nor the explicit doctrine appears in the New Testament, nor did Jesus and his followers intend to contradict the Shema in the Hebrew Scriptures: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord” (Deuteronomy 6:4). There are several subtle confessions in the present day Christianity that the dogma of Trinity is a fallacy. For example the Encyclopedia Britannica states, “By the end of the 4th century, under the leadership of Basil of Caesarea, … the doctrine of the Trinity took substantially the form it has maintained ever since. It is accepted in all of the historic confessions of Christianity, even though the impact of the Enlightenment decreased its importance.” Its decreased importance since the Enlightenment, is perhaps, a subtle recognition of fallacy of Trinity.
For the convenience of the readers all the quotes have been put in blue color. Let me also make a request to His Holiness, the Pope Benedict XVI, for the convenience of other readers, allow me to address you in the second or third person interchangeably from here onwards.
Polytheism was in the air as the Christianity was being formulated under Paul’s directions, many of us do not appreciate that Judaism was a small minority in the Roman Empire, forming perhaps 7% of the population. Majority of the Empire was polytheist and it was in those circumstances that Paul was trying to create a politically correct monotheistic religion and we were given ‘three in one’ rather than multiple gods!
What caused the Monotheism of Judaism be distorted into Trinity can perhaps be imagined from a few verses in Genesis, which show the polytheistic residuals even in the monotheistic tradition of the Old Testament and Judaism:
“When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the LORD said, ‘My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.’
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.” (Genesis 6:1-4)